August 21, 2005

More on the Evils of PowerPoint in Schools

Teachers say creating a PowerPoint presentation captivates students and gives them background using a technological tool common in business.

Critics say PowerPoint requires students to do little more than assemble outlines and is a poor replacement for age-old standards such as essays.

Edward Tufte, professor emeritus at Yale University, has been one of the most vocal opponents, such as in an opinion piece called "PowerPoint is Evil" carried in the September 2003 edition of Wired.

"Rather than learning to write a report using sentences, children are being taught how to formulate client pitches and infomercials," Tufte wrote.

With 10 to 20 words and a piece of clip art for each PowerPoint slide, with only three to six slides per presentation, that amounts to only 80 words for a week's work. "Students would be better off if the schools simply closed down on those days and everyone went to the Exploratorium or wrote an illustrated essay explaining something," he wrote.